All Saints' Anglican Church, Bodalla

All Saints’ Anglican Church,Bodalla

Thomas Mort (the pioneering landowner in the Bodalla area - see details in South Coast Pioneers section) was a prominent Anglican layman. He donated the land on which St Mark’s Church, Darling Point, was constructed and he contributed to the building of Sydney’s St Andrew’s Cathedral. He donated 59 acres of land in Bodalla as a Glebe (land intended to provide an income to support the Church Minister) and had intended to erect a church for the Bodalla community. He even imported, in advance, ten simple stained glass windows for it from England. But he died before any construction began.

The church that was to become All Saints’ Church immediately became a memorial to Thomas and his first wife Theresa and was transformed from being a ‘simple church’ into one designed to accommodate 250 people. It was funded by the Mort family and the Bodalla community.

The Church was designed by Edmund Blacket who had been the architect of St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney, the main University of Sydney building, and Mort’s Sydney home, ‘Greenoaks’ (now ‘Bishopscourt’) in Darling Point. Edmund Blacket’s son, Cyril, who was also an architect, took over supervision of the project.

The Church was built in two stages – the first between 1880 and 1883, the second from 1899 to 1901. The granite that was used in its construction was quarried on the Estate. The Church was intended to be finished with a tall spire, but it was never built.

The entrance door with its intricate hand wrought iron hinges and straps, and the stone baptismal font, were designed by Edmund T Blacket himself, demonstrating the level of detail he provided in the designs for the Church. Within the Church is a particularly fine stained glass window that
was financed as a tribute to Thomas Mort by the residents of Bodalla, along with numerous other objects that have associations with Thomas Mort and the extended Mort family.

A substantial Rectory was built for the town’s Minister downhill from the Church (now unfortunately separated from the Church following the rerouting of the Princes Hwy) which remains in excellent condition today.

All Saints' Bodalla is widely considered to be ‘one of the finest Churches in Australia’, ‘one of the choicest ecclesiastical structures out of Sydney’.